Two of my favorite things turned 54 this summer: me and Wiffleball. Or is it Whiffle Ball? Or Whiffleball?
Anyway, all I can say is I wish my popularity was as great as the game's. It has inspired dozens of leagues, worldwide tournaments, Web sites, tributes and some regular Elvis-like nostalgia. In fact, Wiffleball showed up the same year (1953) as Elvis made his first recording. Both ended up with legions of fans, and both seem to get more popular as the years pass.
The challenge of hitting a ball that dips and weaves like a leaf in the wind, and the feeling that maybe you could actually hit Daisuke Matsuzaka's gyroball or Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckler, is intoxicating.
Beyond that, there are few things better than a summer afternoon in your back yard, junkballing a pitch that positively drops off a cliff or takes a sharp break at the perfect moment. Better yet is the feeling of smacking a swirling pitch onto the roof or into the begonia beds.
The crowd — often consisting of you and your kid brother — goes wild as you jog around the bases.
"It's going, going! " you announce as you fall into your trot. "It's gone!"
God bless David N. Mullany of Fairfield, Conn., who is credited with inventing the game. Few activities have ever provided so much backyard fun. As the story goes, Mullany was trying to design a ball that curved easily for his 13-year-old son, so he fashioned a hollow plastic ball with one side perforated with oblong slots, the other side solid. His kid never became famous, but the game did. Suddenly a pitch that couldn't be mastered with an ordinary baseball was dancing on the wind. At the same time, the hitter learned to connect with pitches he never dreamed of seeing in Little League — or maybe even in the majors.
In that light, I decided to consult someone who spent serious time in the Major Leagues on the merits of Wiffleball. So I called Salt Lake Bees manager Brian Harper, who spent 16 seasons in the majors, including the year he caught for the Twins in the World Series.
I asked him if he played Wiffleball, to which he said, in essence, "Didn't everyone?"
My next question: Did it really help him get to the bigs?
"I think as a kid, any time you can develop hand-eye coordination, it's a good thing," said Harper. "I tell kids any time you swing the bat it helps with hand-eye coordination. It helped me a lot in that I didn't strike out much in my career. When we played, the only way we could get out was to strike out, so it made me a better contact hitter."
The rules of the game vary, but the gist is always the same. The pitcher feels like Sandy Koufax, the hitter feels like Tony Gwynn or Rod Carew.
And the dreamy summer afternoons drift into muted summer evenings, as shouts of joy carry across the suburban yards.
You run back to the house for a hasty dinner and are back out for the late innings.
"I grew up on Wiffleball," said BYU coach Vance Law, who played 12 years in the majors. "In fact, I know my parents had to re-seed the base paths in our yard because we played so often."
I also asked Harper if it was sometimes as much fun playing the plastic version as the real thing, to which he allowed, "When you're a kid, it's so much fun, you play all night. We used to hook up lights in the back yard and play all hours. It was innocent fun. And no doubt about it, it made you see the ball better."
The next question was one I have been dying to ask a Major Leaguer for a long time: Is it harder to hit a Wiffleball, or, say, Roger Clemens?
"Well, a lot of it depends on how far away you are; it can be harder at times, if the pitcher is close and the Wiffleball is really moving," Harper said.
So see. I coulda played in the big leagues.
"But in Wiffleball," he added, "you're not really afraid of getting hit. With Roger Clemens, you had to worry."
Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that.
E-mail: rock@desnews.com